Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

CC geoff, ppc

On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 4:46 PM Kalle Valo <kvalo@kernel.org> wrote:
> "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de> writes:
>
> > On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 13:47, Kalle Valo wrote:
> >>
> >> Is anyone willing to submit patches? Use wireless-next as the baseline
> >> for patches and one driver per commit, please. That way it's easy to
> >> revert later, if needed (hopefully not).
> >
> > I can do it, I've already done most of the work for moving the
> > drivers, so I just need to split up my existing patch and leave out
> > the bits that get added to drivers/staging.
>
> Awesome, thank you!
>
> > I'll also send Greg a patch to remove rtl8192u now that we know
> > that this has been broken for 7 years. Similarly, I'd include
> > another patch to remove PCMCIA support for libertas, as that
> > would otherwise be the only remaining 16-bit PCMCIA wlan card,
> > and I could find no indication of this one ever being popular,
> > unlike the USB/SDIO/SPI variants of the same device or the
> > other PCMCIA drivers.
> >
> > This would leave only a handful of wext implementations in the
> > tree: ipw2x00, ps3-gelic-wireless, staging/rtl8712, staging/rtl8192e
> > and staging/ks7010. Since ipw2x00 is apparently still supported
> > in theory and was rather popular on Pentium-M based systems 20
> > years ago, this may still need to be converted to cfg80211
> > before you can remove support for wext style drivers altogether.
> > ps3-gelic-wireless and rtl8712 are also still maintained but have
> > a much smaller user base I assume.
>
> Actually I would prefer to remove ipw2x00 and ps3-gelic-wireless as
> well. I have not seen any evidence that there would be users for those
> drivers. If we find out that there really are users I can easily add the
> drivers back. The faster we get rid of wext the better, it really needs
> to go away.
>
> --
> https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/list/
>
> https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Johannes Berg]

On Thu, 2023-10-12 at 16:36 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> 
> ps3-gelic-wireless

Didn't Sony disable Linux on PS3 eventually? Though maybe someone still
has some devices with old software.

johannes

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

Hi Johannes,

On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 5:28 PM Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 2023-10-12 at 16:36 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> >
> > ps3-gelic-wireless
>
> Didn't Sony disable Linux on PS3 eventually? Though maybe someone still
> has some devices with old software.

If you didn't update the firmware, you could keep on using Linux.

And people may have found a vulnerability in more recent firmware
versions that allows them to run custom software.
I don't know, it's been +10 years ago I touched a PS3 ;-)

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Johannes Berg]

On Thu, 2023-10-12 at 17:39 +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> Hi Johannes,
> 
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 5:28 PM Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2023-10-12 at 16:36 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > > 
> > > ps3-gelic-wireless
> > 
> > Didn't Sony disable Linux on PS3 eventually? Though maybe someone still
> > has some devices with old software.
> 
> If you didn't update the firmware, you could keep on using Linux.
> 
> And people may have found a vulnerability in more recent firmware
> versions that allows them to run custom software.

Yeah, fair.

> I don't know, it's been +10 years ago I touched a PS3 ;-)

I never had one :-)

But seriously - is it worth to try to keep a wireless driver for it if
we don't even know anyone using a PS3 at all?

But maybe we'll find someone :-)

johannes

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Geoff Levand]

On 10/12/23 17:41, Johannes Berg wrote:
> But seriously - is it worth to try to keep a wireless driver for it if
> we don't even know anyone using a PS3 at all?

There is still a considerable user base for the PS3, so we
must keep the ps3-gelic-wireless driver.

-Geoff

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 18:36, Geoff Levand wrote:
> On 10/12/23 17:41, Johannes Berg wrote:
>> But seriously - is it worth to try to keep a wireless driver for it if
>> we don't even know anyone using a PS3 at all?
>
> There is still a considerable user base for the PS3, so we
> must keep the ps3-gelic-wireless driver.

Do you know if anyone has tried changing this driver over to the
cfg80211 interface from the wireless extensions? With the
series I have prepared now, it is the only driver outside of
drivers/staging that still uses wext and stops us from removing
that altogether. 

[side note: it appears that the PS3 I have is the only model
 without wireless networking, as I bought cheapest Asian 20GB version
 back in early 2007. It still has the original firmware on it
 and should run Linux, but I haven't tried it since at least
 2009].

    Arnd

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Johannes Berg]

On Fri, 2023-10-13 at 17:44 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 18:36, Geoff Levand wrote:
> > On 10/12/23 17:41, Johannes Berg wrote:
> > > But seriously - is it worth to try to keep a wireless driver for it if
> > > we don't even know anyone using a PS3 at all?
> > 
> > There is still a considerable user base for the PS3, so we
> > must keep the ps3-gelic-wireless driver.
> 
> Do you know if anyone has tried changing this driver over to the
> cfg80211 interface from the wireless extensions?

I looked at that yesterday, and sadly I _think_ it's not even possible,
there are some corner cases in it like "no WPA2" that don't seem to be
fully covered in cfg80211/nl80211, at least not with the APIs today and
with current versions of wpa_supplicant.

It might still be doable because things like
WPA_DRIVER_CAPA_KEY_MGMT_WPA2_PSK don't really seem to be used much in
wpa_supplicant, but we'd have to carefully test that I guess.

Also, it depends on the PS3 firmware version whether or not that's
supported.

Then again, arguably wifi without WPA2 is pretty much useless these
days?

johannes

Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

[Jeff Johnson]

On 10/13/2023 11:02 AM, Johannes Berg wrote:
> On Fri, 2023-10-13 at 17:44 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 18:36, Geoff Levand wrote:
>>> On 10/12/23 17:41, Johannes Berg wrote:
>>>> But seriously - is it worth to try to keep a wireless driver for it if
>>>> we don't even know anyone using a PS3 at all?
>>>
>>> There is still a considerable user base for the PS3, so we
>>> must keep the ps3-gelic-wireless driver.
>>
>> Do you know if anyone has tried changing this driver over to the
>> cfg80211 interface from the wireless extensions?
> 
> I looked at that yesterday, and sadly I _think_ it's not even possible,
> there are some corner cases in it like "no WPA2" that don't seem to be
> fully covered in cfg80211/nl80211, at least not with the APIs today and
> with current versions of wpa_supplicant.
> 
> It might still be doable because things like
> WPA_DRIVER_CAPA_KEY_MGMT_WPA2_PSK don't really seem to be used much in
> wpa_supplicant, but we'd have to carefully test that I guess.
> 
> Also, it depends on the PS3 firmware version whether or not that's
> supported.
> 
> Then again, arguably wifi without WPA2 is pretty much useless these
> days?

This is a good point. It doesn't matter if the clients work if there are 
no Access Points to connect to. And if you do have an old one you can 
connect to, it will be an insecure connection. Wardriving, anyone?

/jeff